Set top boxes are known to incorporate hard disks to allow customers, or viewers, to locally cache, or store to memory, television programming to be played back at a later time. The play back can occur in either true-speed mode or in reverse or fast-forward trick modes. It is well known that the consumer employs fast forward trick mode during play back to skip over commercials. Currently, video that is locally stored is only suited for playback at a true speed. Therefore, when a customer fast forwards through commercial advertisements, the customer sees either a sped up version of the commercial or garbled un-intelligible video with high-pitched or no audio.
Trick-mode playback speed presents a significant disadvantage for an advertiser that has paid for the advertisement to be played during a commercial spot that never gets viewed by the consumer. The customer who fast forwards over commercial spots is not receiving the message the advertiser has paid to be conveyed to consumers.
Attempts have been made to allow advertisers to make their impressions on consumers even when the program is being fast forwarded. In one example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,070,186 to Nishio, the commercial video programming is transmitted from a special video storage unit that prevents the consumer from skipping the commercials, even when the fast-forward command is given by the consumer. This method requires two-way communication between the receiver and the video storage unit, and furthermore, no doubt leads to much frustration on the part of the consumer.
In another example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,732,217 to Emura, the video system plays back at the speed commanded by the consumer, but reads out key frames at a predetermined interval and transmits the key frames for display to satisfy a reduced playback time without allowing the customer to completely skip over the commercial. However this method provides an interrupted, or choppy, commercial for the consumer.
There is a need for a commercial spot to play smoothly and deliberately, conveying the appropriate message to the consumer during play back, even during trick-modes for playback that include fast forward and fast rewind.